News

News from July 2003

The title of this article, Game Over, is appropriate. Playstation consoles can no longer be fixed to run games made to run on different models (that is, to say, they can no longer be modded). Sony sells games in three distinct regions, and they are not supporting the modding of playstation consoles because of the evident threat of piracy. This is an interesting and kind of unexpected decision by Sony, when the threat of emulation seems to be much greater than modded games.

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I don't own a modded playstation or know anyone that does, so this doesn't affect me. However, as Tiddles kindly pointed out to me, this "sucks for Australia [because] nobody ever releases games there." The Australian guy mentioned that their consumers can't use legally imported games anymore. I don't know how much of a blow to their ecmonomy that is, but that pretty much shuts down imports entirely, except of course when people mod their playstations illegally.

That's right, the site is having another birthday today. This marks the end of the first year of CoN5, and the sixth year of Caves of Narshe as a whole. To learn more, you'll want to read the CoNHistory feature article that was published several months ago.

You may not know this, but this birthday shows yet again that CoN is one of the oldest Final Fantasy sites still in existance. For instance, our affiliate Final Fantasy Gurus started life in mid 1998 as an FF8 site. Eyes on Final Fantasy started in 1999. Even FFOnline started, that's right, three months AFTER CoN came into being.

It's been a long time running this site for me. Cliched as it may sound, there really have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs. Recently, though, it has been almost all up, and I'm not just talking about the site stats, or the chat stats (even though the month concluding today was our biggest month ever for both).

I started this site as a lark, with no goals or plan in mind. If you've seen CoN2, then you know that not having a plan is not really a good thing. To be quite honest, though, I still don't have many specific plans for this site, which I am sure vexes Tiddles to no end. While the following is not a real chat, I'm sure it's not far from the truth:

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Tiddles, let's make the site bigger and better today. Okay, but we did that YESTERDAY. What are we going to do differently today? Maybe you weren't listening. I said BIGGER and BETTER. Now let's get to work.

I'm rambling now, as I am wont to do. Sorry about that. Let's wrap it up now. I want to say thanks to the staff, most of whom have been with me as teammates for two and a half years now, and as friends for much longer. I intend specifically thank each and every one of you, especially my fellow admins - you have touched my life all in your own special ways, and I'll not forget that. I'd also like to thank the forum and chat membership as a whole for your support and enthusiasm, and a few of you in particular for contributing to the site and its community, like Tommah, Narratorway, Sabin, Murrrr, Phoenix, and many others.

I'm still working on plans to celebrate. Knowing me, we'll celebrate in about a month.

Well, this news makes me drool. Apparently, the original Wild ARMs is being remade to include five new playable characters, full 3-D graphics with realistic character models, voice acting, and presumably, a story rewrite to include those five new characters. The original Wild ARMs, if people remember, was rushed out because the company wanted it to be the first game on the Playstation with 3-D battles, and they needed to beat Final Fantasy 7. As a result, the game wasn't what it could have been.

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A lot of details are lacking from this news article...unless I just completely missed it, they're not even saying what system this is on. I'm assuming it'll be for PS2, which will kick butt, since the company has already shown what it can do with the fabulous Wild ARMs 3. I will definitely hope and write letters to the companies to get this one released in the United States...dang...

Atlus brings the late Eighties period to Gameboy Advance with Double Dragon Advance and River City Ransom EX. Atlus has released one screenshot of each for the public to drool over. These are just not ports of the old of the old NES games (or even the superior arcade version in the case of Double Dragon), but are new games with completely updated graphics and improved stories.

For someone like me, there's no better way to spend your warm, summer days than sitting in your room with the curtains shut marking up some remarkably dark website layout.

Hence, I present you with the Digitiser style, selectable from the style page, which becomes the first original selectable style. I guess some of you will like it, and some of you won't, especially if you have a dark monitor and/or a lot of glare. Let me know what you think.

I don't know about you, but one thing that irks me about using online game guides is having to run back to the computer to check something. Maybe even have to reconnect, on dialup. And then someone's using the phone. Oh, it's such a trial. The very thought of it is making me perspire.

Wouldn't it be handy if you could just print out some information for reference and have it to hand during those difficult moments? But, curse those graphical sites, they aren't quite print friendly.

Or, you can use the new "Printable Page" links at the bottom of most of our pages. That would also work. Probably. If you see a page that doesn't have a print link that you think should, or a page that does have a print link that you think shouldn't, or find anything that otherwise doesn't work (unless you're using some deeply embarassing browser like Netscape 4), please do let us know.

Squenix is considering a port of Final Fantasy III, the only installment of the series that has not had a North American release, to the Gameboy Advance. The game would be a port of the Wonderswan version and not the old Famicom version. With the Wonderswan dying (plus it not evening seeing a North American or European release) it would only make sense to port this game.

The folks over at Quiter are reporting, through an anonymous source, that Square Enix is currently planning to create an online installment of their Front Mission series.

Square Enix Japan recently registered the name "Front Mission History," and on top of that, Square Enix USA recently acquired the rights to develop a "computer game strategy / video game strategy through a global communication network."

As you can see, this new game is all BUT confirmed at this point. Remember, this is unconfirmed news, so take it for what you will, folks.

This is soooooo awesome. All signs point to this being true, and dammit, I need a strategy fix after completely mastering Advance Wars 2. The Front Mission series was always interesting to me because it was one part Strategy RPG (which is always cool) and one part sci-fi (also cool). The customization options in the previous games were also top-notch, and online titles are known for heavy customization.

It's like a potluck dinner on independence day. Take your pick! We've got a little bit of FF4, a little bit of FF5, and a little bit of FF6. Mmm, that Bartz salad looks rather tasty, and you might enjoy some delicious Rosa cookies.

Okay, enough with the silliness. Josh and I worked on it today and got twelve new fanarts updated, along with two new layouts. You can see the fanart by visiting the Fanart sections (or the New Fanart section), and you can see the Gau layout by refreshing the FF6 main page, and the Bartz layout by refreshing the FF5 main page. Keep in mind that with the new style options, you will need to be using the CoN5 layout to view the fanart layouts.

Special thanks to the following who submitted art in today's update: Kris-Chan, Narratorway, Firia, and Viger. Three of those four definitely need to join the forums, eh?